For most of my life, China existed in my family as a distant but persistent presence \u2014 a place spoken of in fragments, attached to old photos and diaries about a great-grandfather who spent decades there as an American missionary.<\/p>\n
I have never visited China. I don\u2019t speak Mandarin or Cantonese.<\/p>\n
But my great-grandfather, William Artyn Main, considered China home for much of his life.<\/p>\n
He arrived there in 1896, shortly after graduating from Northwestern University and marrying his wife, Emma.<\/p>\n
Assigned to Methodist missions in Fuzhou, in southeastern China, he became treasurer of the church\u2019s operations there.<\/p>\n
He lived through political upheaval and war, remained during the Japanese invasion in 1937 and didn\u2019t leave permanently until 1941, when the conflict forced his evacuation. He died in California four years later, unable to return.<\/p>\n
A Chicago Daily Tribune story lists Northwestern University graduates feared dead in the Boxer rebellion in China in 1900. William Artyn Main was one of those feared dead.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n As a child, I knew only pieces of that history. China felt less like a place than a family echo. Hand-me-down rugs and dinnerware served as mementos of that era.<\/p>\n Last week, though, my son Thomas began researching our ancestry, hoping to learn more about the years the Main family spent overseas as American expatriates.<\/p>\n And what he uncovered transformed those scattered family memories into something vivid and unexpectedly current.<\/p>\n He found that more than 100 years ago, the Rev. William A. Main and his family spent their summers in Kuliang, a mountain community in the hills outside the big city of Fuzhou.<\/p>\n Kuliang is known for its cooler climate and lush landscape.<\/p>\n I\u2019d never heard of the place.<\/p>\n After discovering records showing the family had lived there, Thomas left an email message on a Fuzhou tourism account asking whether they could locate where the home was \u2014 and if it still existed.<\/p>\n Reporter Frank Main\u2019s great-grandfather, William Artyn Main (top left); his grandfather, Orrin William Main, bottom right. Photo taken in 1905 in China. <\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n The response came quickly.<\/p>\n Tourism officials sent photos of a small gray stone building with a red sign mounted outside reading: \u201cMr. Main\u2019s House.\u201d They explained the property had been preserved as part of a historic district of former missionary homes in Kuliang.<\/p>\n Soon afterward, Thomas received a video of the house set to the Scottish song \u201cAuld Lang Syne.\u201d<\/p>\n The house, he learned, had been restored under a preservation initiative supported by the Chinese government during the tenure of Xi Jinping while he was a local official in the region.<\/p>\n He\u2019s now the president of China.<\/p>\n The interior of \u201cMr. Main\u2019s House,\u201d now a coffee house in Kuliang, China.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Today, the former missionary residence operates as a public coffeehouse.<\/p>\n Our discovery of this house felt improbable enough on its own. But there was more.<\/p>\n Through conversations with his Chinese contacts, Thomas learned about the \u201cFriends of Kuliang,\u201d a group made up largely of descendants of American missionaries who once lived there. Some have returned to visit and formed enduring relationships with local residents.<\/p>\n Over the years, Kuliang has also become a symbolic site of cultural exchange between China and the United States, hosting student performances and other events encouraged by Xi and his wife.<\/p>\n Part of that effort traces back to 1992, when Xi was serving as Communist Party chief in Fuzhou.<\/p>\n After reading about an American woman named Elizabeth Gardner, whose husband had spent part of his childhood in Kuliang and longed to see it again before he died, Xi arranged for her to visit the town.<\/p>\n Two decades later, while serving as China\u2019s vice president, Xi recounted the episode during an official trip to the United States.<\/p>\n \u201cI believe there are a lot of touching stories like this between Chinese and American people,\u201d he said on that 2012 trip.<\/p>\n President Donald Trump speaks with Chinese President Xi Jinping after a visit to the Zhongnanhai Garden in Beijing, China, on May 15.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Last year, Xie Feng, China\u2019s ambassador to the U.S., also cited Kuliang as an example of personal ties that could help stabilize relations between the two countries at a time of growing political and military tension.<\/p>\n For me, the story carries a quieter significance.<\/p>\n My great-grandfather couldn\u2019t have imagined the home where his family once escaped the summer heat would someday stand as a carefully preserved symbol of American-Chinese friendship.<\/p>\n Yet at a moment when the two nations increasingly define one another through rivalry and suspicion, I find something moving in the survival of our family\u2019s brick-and-mortar connection to China.<\/p>\n \u201cMr. Main\u2019s House\u201d still stands in the hills outside Fuzhou.<\/p>\n And last week, for the first time, we saw it.<\/p>\n![\"Top](\"https:\/\/cst.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/55d92e3\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/1118x1502+0+0\/resize\/840x1129!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F55%2F1e%2Fce9d7df14b6493589537a3b3eefa%2Fscreenshot-2026-05-20-at-3-14-17-pm.png\")
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